Weight-loss surgery may halve the risk of death in adults

Health Desk: 20 January 2018: Obese middle-aged men and women who undergo bariatric surgery for weight loss may have reduced their risk of death by 50 percent than those tackling their weight through diet and behavior alone, finds a study.

Weight loss is achieved by reducing the size of the stomach with a gastric band or through the removal of a portion of the stomach (sleeve gastrectomy or biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch) or by resecting and re-routing the small intestine to a small stomach pouch or (Roux-en-Y gastric bypass(RYGB)surgery).

The rate of death in individuals who did not have surgery was 2.3 percent compared to 1.3 percent in those who had surgery, the findings showed.

For the study, published in the journal JAMA, the team compared 8,385 people who had the surgery (65 percent women and 35 percent men) to 25,155 who did not, with an average age of 46 with a body mass index (BMI) of 40.

Apart from weight loss, the surgery also lowered rates of new diabetes diagnoses, improved blood pressure, and a greater proportion of diabetic individuals going into remission.